‘The Leftovers’ Season 2 Premiere Recap: All My Hexes Live in Texas

The ironic thing about the return of The Leftovers is that there’s not a lot left over from the first go-round. The dark HBO drama about what you might call a mild post-apocalypse, set several years after two percent of the world’s population disappeared into thin air in an event referred to as the Sudden Departure, has packed up stakes and moved from the tony suburb of Mapleton, New York to the “Miracle” town of Jasper, Texas—population 9,261 and holding. Its core cast has effectively doubled with new additions, pushing last season’s stars to the margins, at least in this initial episode.

Hell, even the opening credits have changed. As of “Axis Mundi,” tonight’s premiere, Season One’s morosely biblical montage has been replaced with a relatively cheery bit of graphic Americana studded with the silhouettes of the Departed, completely with country-music soundtrack. (If it reminds you of True Detective, that’s no coincidence—it’s made by Elastic, the same company that does the main titles of pretty much every show on TV these days, True D included.)

And that’s before we get to the lengthy, wordless prologue: The story of a pregnant cavewoman who narrowly survives an earthquake the night of her baby’s birth, only to succumb to a snakebite while trying to find fellow humans—at which point another prehistoric person plucks the infant from the dying mother’s arms, presumably to safety. (What can we say? Co-creator Damon Lindelof, who helped adapt the series from Tom Perrotta’s novel, is into the idea.) The Leftovers? More like the makeover.

The success of this soft reboot likely lies in the hands of the new cast, primarily the Murphys—a nuclear family that, thanks to Jarden’s inexplicable immunity from the equally inexplicable Sudden Departure, remains mercifully undetonated. There’s Evie, a seemingly popular teenager who sometimes forgets to take her epilepsy medication amid her busy schedule of choir performances, softball practice, swimming in the town’s potentially miraculous water supply, and streaking through the woods with her friends.

There’s Michael, the twin brother to whom she appears to be close. A conscientious, religious kid, he delivers his mom’s home cooking to the stylite hermit who lives in the center of town when he’s not collecting test tubes full of “Miracle” water as a fundraiser for the Baptist church where he reads from the Scripture during Sunday service. But he’s no holy-rolling fraud: He’s up front to a pair of confused german tourists that the water is just a souvenir, not a God-given anti-Departure vaccine.

There’s Erika, their mom, a good-natured doctor who—well, honestly, everyone in this family is good-natured, a marked contrast from the morose residents of Mapleton last season. Anyway, Erika speaks unaccented English, indicating that her severe hearing impediment was not with her from birth. She also…uh…digs up a box she buried in the forest and…freed the live bird inside it? Or something to that effect?

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Erika’s married to John, perpetually smiling sort who spends the early portion of the episode endearingly Dad-ing it up. He sleeps late and is impossible to wake up, he treats catching the cricket stuck somewhere in the house like a Navy SEAL mission, he tries to steal his son’s breakfast bacon. A real sweetheart, right? Until you find out his real function in the community: Under the guise of his job as a firefighter, he and the other boys down at the department appear to be an anti-mysticism vigilante squad. It’s unclear if they’re concerned about snake-oil salesmen and phony fortune tellers ripping off the town and its countless credulous tourists, or if they suspect there really is a supernatural source of the town’s Departure-free status—and potentially other powers as well—and are trying to keep it a secret.

Either way, here’s what they do to Isaac, a kindly soothsayer with a cool cross earring played by Eddie Winslow who predicts that something bad’s about to happen to John:

I can’t decide who’d be worse off if John’s gang of firestarting firefighters got ahold of them: Erika, who, I’m assuming, has discovered a way to bring the dead (or at least birds in shoeboxes) back to life; or actor Darius McCrary’s fellow TGIF veteran Mark Linn-Baker, revealed in the episode’s funniest scene to have faked his Departure to live the good life in South America:

By the end of the episode, last season’s leads have begun to show up. Reverend Matt Jamison has gotten a new gig as a fill-in pastor at Michael’s church, where his apparent belief that Jarden has somehow helped revive his braindead wife triggers John’s suspicions. Then the Rev’s sister Nora and her new husband (?) Kevin—who as played by Carrie Coon and Justin Theroux are the most excruciatingly attractive couple on TV—move next door to the Murphys with their teenage daughter Jill and their cult-leader-orphan baby Lily (it’s a long story).

Seriously, look at these people. Breathtaking. ANYWAY. Predictable teen flirtations between Michael and Jill ensue. Less predictable is the revelation that John had been imprisoned for attempted murder (“Well, I didn’t try hard enough,” he explains, his slow-eyed smile growing more menacing by the minute), and John’s seeming suspicion of Kevin, too.

Then Evie goes for a midnight swim and drowns in a sinkhole opened by one of the town’s countless localized earthquakes. Random, heartwrenching tragedy? Now this is the Leftovers we know and love!

The big question: Is this overhaul a good idea? I’m sure HBO thinks so. The cheerier credits alone bring it much more in line with the network’s other fare, and a diversified cast makes artistic, ethical, and financial sense. But The Leftovers stumbled real fucking hard out of the gate the first time around (that cornball Rev. Matt spotlight episode is one of the worst-written episodes of prestige TV ever), and it took most of the season to firmly reestablish its footing. Once it did, it never looked back—by its final two episodes in particular it was utterly ruthless in its exploration of depression, grief, and loss, gutsy subjects for a TV climate that’s still more attuned to power struggles than internal ones. It was also a real star turn for Coon, whose Nora was the quietly shattered heart of the show.

Now it’s gotten a heart transplant. The Murphy family dynamic has the ingredients to be interesting, at least. And the worldbuilding done so far with Jarden—the hermits and goat-sacrificers, the ID bracelets visitors have to wear, the impression that trespassers are ejected with extreme prejudice, John’s vigilante crew, the earthquakes, the mysterious and perhaps only metaphorical connection to the cavewomen and the baby—are definitely intriguing.

But since Season One got it all so right in the end, does starting over again bode well or ill? The Leftovers got very good indeed, but it took a whole lot of huffing and puffing to get there; tight storytelling that doesn’t overstate its emotional case is not exactly Lindelof’s strong suit. A show this dark can’t be puffy without tipping over into melodrama, and starting over could duplicate the problem. For now, as the song says, I guess we’ll let the mystery be.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) is a freelance writer who lives with Diet Coke and his daughter, not necessarily in that order, on Long Island.